Jonathan Zittrain is the leading Internet professor in the world. A founder of the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet & Society, he currently is Oxford University’s Internet guru. He has a new, widely-heralded book: “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.” No doubt, net neutrality advocates were banking on Professor Zittrain to make their cause the centerpiece of his 338 page book with a title like that. But, alas, net neutrality is mentioned only briefly, in passing, deep into the book. And Zittrain hardly is an advocate for the regulation sought by net neutrality fans.

The main focus of the book is that viruses, spyware and privacy invasions by search engines will result in consumers using more secure internet appliances like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Xbox, rather than programmable PCs. Zittrain is concerned that such appliances will limit Internet innovation and the Internet experience.

As for net neutrality, Zittrain concludes: “One answer, then, to the question of net neutrality is that wide-open competition is good and can help address the primary worries of network neutrality proponents. In the absence of broad competition, some intervention could be helpful, but in a world of open PCs some users can more or less help themselves, routing around some blockages that seek to prevent them from doing what they want to do online.”

So, Zittrain hardy picks up the cudgel of net neutrality, and in fact makes the arguments against legislation and regulation by citing competition and technology as the solution should there actually be a problem (which there isn’t).